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So Strange

I was a poor inner city kid in the fifties. My father had died and left my mother with three small children. We were the poorest family in the street. I went to Lambeth Road Secondary School in Liverpool. In that school there was a teacher who really didn't like me. She called me the 'Dead End Kid'. I used to day dream of one day showing that teacher I was not a dead end kid. I used to fantasise about meeting that teacher as a grown up, sometimes I would be driving past her in a car (any car would do because at that time nobody owned cars in our neighbourhood) Or I would meet her and tell her about my art exhibition. I left at school at fifteen, got a job, met a boy, and forgot about this teacher, and forgot about those day dreams. We married and left Liverpool. My husband became a Hydrographic Surveyor and we went to live in Portugal. We were doing very well, and I had my own car, we were both very young I was 23 and my husband was 25 and the year was 1972. One day I drove to Barcelos. Barcelos was a little market town north of Oporto in Portugal, not far from where we lived in Esposende. As I parked my car a tour bus pulled up, this was quite rare because northern Portugal was not a tourist area, most tourists went to the Algave. I recognised Miss Ormisher, my old teacher, the own who hated me. I went up to her and said hello, I told her I used to be one of her pupils, She didnt recognise me. I said I was one of the naughty ones. She said: I don't think so, what was your name. I told her I was Sandra Peers (that's my true maiden name and the teacher's name is her real name) Her jaw dropped open, she was flabberghasted. She had seen me get out of my posh car, I was dressed really well, I looked prosperous and attractive, not scruffy and poor, with holes in my shoes. She asked me what I was doing in Portugal, I told her I lived there, she asked so many questions, and the answers showed her that I had not been a Dead End Kid. My dream had come true a hundred times better than any of the day dreams I had as a child. To me that was the most amazing coincidence in my life, and there have been many more coincidences since. It felt like some cosmic force in the universe had tuned in to that poor scrap of a child's dreams and decided to make those dreams come true - only BIG TIME.